Acclaimed Writer of Literary and Creative Nonfiction
Recently Published
Let's Keep Doing This: Writings in Honour of Stan Persky
Myrna has an essay, "Wandering Spirit," in a new collection in honour of the Canadian writer and philosopher, Stan Persky. It includes contributions by Alberto Manguel, Brian Fawcett, John Ralston Saul and Slavenka Drakulic, among others.
Award Winning
Prodigal Daughter
A geographical, historical, and spiritual odyssey by Canada’s high priestess of creative nonfiction.
About Myrna
Myrna Kostash is an acclaimed writer of literary and creative nonfiction who makes her home in Edmonton when she is not travelling in pursuit of her varied literary interests and passions. These have taken her from school halls in Vancouver, BC, to Ukrainian weddings in Two Hills, Alberta; from the site of the mass grave of Cree warriors in Battleford, Saskatchewan, to a fishers’ meeting in Digby, Nova Scotia; from the British Library in London, UK, to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. She is inspired in her work by her childhood in the Ukrainian-Canadian community of Edmonton, her rites of passage through the Sixties in the US, Canada and Europe, by her discovery of the New Journalism and feminism in the 1970s, by her rediscovery of her western Canadian roots in the 1980s, and most recently, by her return to her spiritual sources in Byzantium and the Eastern Christian (Orthodox) Church.
Author photo by Markian Lozowchuk/Redux
News & Events
Reading the River
Thanks to the initiative of University of Alberta scholars, Jessica Zychowicz and Vita Yakovleva, Myrna was included in events during the University's International Week 2020.
Speakers' Series of the St John's Cathedral branch
As part of the Speakers' Series of the St John's Cathedral branch of the Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada, Myrna spoke in Edmonton at St John's Cultural Centre about Ukrainian settler-Indigenous relations.
Read more >
An Evening with Myrna Kostash
In October 2018, at “An Evening with Myrna Kostash,” Myrna presented a talk to the Melbourne members of the Association of Ukrainians of Victoria (Aus), “Ancestors and Elders: Ukrainian-Canadian Settlers, the First Nations and the Myth of ‘Free Land.'”
Read lecture >
Interview with Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke
Myrna’s interview with Greek writer, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, appears in issue #101 of Brick magazine (Myrna’s favourite hot spot for literary nonfiction). Buy a copy!
Myrna’s most recent book, The Seven Oaks Reader, continues to get notice:
Good Reads review >
All Lit Up overview >
Scottish Review of Books >
Kobzar Literary Award
Myrna is thrilled to be one of seven women writers who have won the Kobzar Biennial Literary Award for "outstanding contributions to Canadian literary arts by authors who develop a Ukrainian Canadian theme with literary merit" for the anthology Unbound: Ukrainian-Canadians Writing Home, edited by Lindy Ledohowski and Lisa Grekul and published by University of Toronto Press with cover art by Toronto artist Natalka Husar. The prize, worth $25,000 and sponsored by the Shevchenko Foundation, was announced at a sold-out gala in Toronto March 1, 2018.
Featured in Prairie Fire
Myrna was delighted to be in the same recent issue of the terrific Winnipeg-based literary magazine, Prairie Fire, as poets Alice Major, Bert Almon, Lorne Daniel and Stephen Berg, among other bright lights. Myrna's contribution was a creative nonfiction, "Two Hills Diary" based on the journal she kept when living in Two Hills the summer of 1975, to research All of Baba's Children.
Photos
Zemlya/Nanaskomun, We Give Thanks for the Land was a Ukrainian-Canadian and Aboriginal Ceremonial Exchange of Gifts presented to both communities in September 2012 by Myrna Kostash and Sharon Pasula, Metis activist. The program booklet for Shumka Dancers' recent new production, Ancestors and Elders, April 2018 and March 2019 states: "We acknowledge the foresight of Myrna Kostash and Sharon Pasula whose project entitled Zemlya/Nanaskomun first brought these stories to our attention."
Recent Articles
Myrna spent hours with Michelle and Bill Tracy of Sherwood Park, Alberta as they opened up their extraordinary Indigenous art collection in their home. Her piece, "The Bill and Michelle Tracy Indigenous Art Collection," was published in ACUA VITAE magazine winter 2018-2019.
Read article >
The November 2018 issue of Alberta Views magazine featured Myrna's piece, "Who Was Uncle Nick? The black and white photograph, such as those taken with a Brownie box camera, shows a man, perhaps 40 years old, with the sun- and wind-burned face of a farmer, a thick hank of dark hair falling ..." Read here
More Greek writers spoke with Myrna in Athens in 1984.
Rhea Galanaki >
Nasos Vayenas >
Myrna opens her 1975 diary for ACUA magazine (Alberta Council for Ukrainian Arts)
Media
November 19, 2019, as part of the University of Alberta's Alumni Association series, The Educated Critic, Myrna spoke to a sold-out audience in the Wedgewood Room of the Fairmont Macdonald Hotel in Edmonton.She spoke about and read from her classic 2009 book, Reading the River: A Traveller's Companion to the North Saskatchewan River.
From the Blog
- Hagia Sophia Ayasofya Holy Wisdom: Whose Is She?“One day Constantinople will be conquered,” wrote the Prophet Muhammad. “How beautiful its conqueror and how beautiful that conqueror’s soldier.” Moustafa the night clerk, in an aureole of black curls, had bent his head over a medical textbook under a small shaded lamp at the miniscule Read more >
- The Woman With the Alabaster JarKassia A comely woman’s face, her eyebrows arched and eyes heavy-lidded and red mouth succulent, glances sideways from within a mosaic fragment on the cover of the CD. The disc is titled “Kassia”, and records Byzantine hymns from “the first female composer of the Read more >